


Beautiful man with a beautiful face, who was not a man at all

by an_earl



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: And can't turn it off, Angst, Character Study, Chloe Decker Finds Out, Chloe Decker is Good at investigating because she is a detective, Drama, F/M, Gen, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Devil Reveal, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) is Bad at Feelings, POV Chloe Decker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 15:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15866688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_earl/pseuds/an_earl
Summary: Chloe Decker is a rational person, and for someone like her there has to be some kind of logic to everything. It makes seeing things like — Lucifer on his knees, shielding her with the air of someone committing to memory that people were in fact made of paper flesh and brittle bone and warm blood, gasping with surprise as he was shot — annoying, to say the least.A story about Chloe seeing the truth of a face. A Lucifer character study.





	Beautiful man with a beautiful face, who was not a man at all

**Author's Note:**

> Begins with the season 3 finale. Lucifer has whisked Chloe away to the top of the building.

 

A whiff of gun smoke, heady and sharp. A snap of bones and muscles like —  _like bird's wings,_ like tufts of plucked feathers falling in red and white, and a stinging rush of wind in her face like speeding down a highway, like the sensation of falling and—

Lucifer's face. The sun bright behind him for a moment, like a halo.

He is an angel.

 

* * *

 

TRANSCRIPT: CONVERSATION BETWEEN DETECTIVES DANIEL ESPINOZA AND CHLOE DECKER.

[On a high rise landing pad: daytime.]

ESPINOZA:

"Chloe! _Uh—_  it's a trap."

DECKER:

"Dan I — I know. I know. We had to find out the hard way. Pierce — he tried to kill us."

ESPINOZA:

(frantic) "What?! Are you ok?"

DECKER:

"Yeah. I don't know  _how,_  but um." (A pause. She takes hard, deep breaths.) "Or maybe I know. Maybe I've been avoiding the truth this whole time—"

[Below: Gunshots sound.]

DECKER:

(whispers) "…I have to go."

 

* * *

 

 **In the beginning,** Chloe Decker met Lucifer under the dim lights of a nightclub past midnight.

She walked towards the sound of slow jazz being tapped across a grand piano. She heard him before she saw him,  _really saw him,_  velvety light voice just so that those who heard it were instantly convinced it was one accustomed to singing.

"Is that a stage name, or something?" she asked, raising her eyes off the keys, irritated by it. His voice. Rolling, uncharacteristically high, as sure and sweet as those old late night radio talk shows — showcasing beautiful voices that hid behind radio waves, because they did not belong to beautiful men.

But he was. Beautiful, she noted, but arrogant. Just a performer, a beautiful man that wore beautiful suits and sang beautiful songs. He looked up at her, finishing the last note of the music as he did it. Smiling that white picket smile. In an instant, he shifted, putting all his attention onto her and her only.

"God given, I'm afraid."

It irritated her. A woman was dead. Brutally murdered leaving the dim lights of the nightclub past midnight, having listened to the sound of slow jazz being tapped across a grand piano.

The LAPD crawled around the club, upheaving it's stylish furnishings and its dreamlike atmosphere, like invaders come unannounced. Lucifer watched her, his dark eyes lit with a bright look in them. A spark, buried and subdued, but undoubtedly there. Her irritation melted away into intrigue as he smiled a beautiful smile, with nothing behind it that denoted joy.

A woman was dead, and Lucifer Morningstar said, "The one that did this must be punished."

He played piano, humming a playful tune. His ringed fingers clenched into a fist as he sighed lovingly. He may have been calm, jovial, even — but her irritation at his calm acquiescence disappeared. A woman was dead and he was just as riled as she was. He asked what the LAPD would do, and meant, _why on earth should I trust you?_  He stated, quite surely, 'they will be punished,' and meant _I want justice._

_That, before he ruined it by saying things men said to women who looked fuckable._

But Chloe Decker quickly learned that when Lucifer Morningstar said one thing, he often meant another.

"Detective," Lucifer thanked politely.

 

* * *

 

She kept meeting him. Beneath the bushes hiding in wait for a predator, hard vest strapped beneath her coat. Amid the crowd, sifting through a sea of opera lovers searching for a wealthy suspect. In a fast car not moving, behind tinted windows in the middle of a sting. In her home with her _little monkey,_  him shoulder to shoulder with Trixie squabbling about the intricacies of monopoly figurines, how the knight on the horse was bound to lose to the wheel barrel. Licking lollipops on the ground, insisting strawberry mixed well with apple.

Beneath the bushes, Chloe flinched alive and Lucifer walked out into the damned open, asking assuringly for the perp to come at him, giving her a clear shot. "Ehem, what will it take for someone to get a little attention around here? Some alone time, gentleman-to-serial-killer?"

Amid the elegant crowd, Lucifer came up out of nowhere, bowing low and offering his arm, "I've acquainted myself with our suspect, may I so kindly introduce you to her?"

In the black Mercedes that cost more than an entire year of her salary, Lucifer sat in the passengers seat, letting her commandeer both the vehicle and the operation. "—I'm not shallow!" he was saying, mixing a martini from the Mercedes' inbuilt cooler, one hand on the shaker and the other rummaging for glasses. "How could they even suggest that of me! Do I — do I strike you as... _shallow?"_

"You're so deeply shallow I doubt you're even in the pool."

"What?!"

"Huh?"

He slunk back, reclining. "You take that back, Detective."

"I can't unsay what I've already said."

"Then un-mean it!"

"But I meant it."

"Detective!" he gasped, scandalised.

He drove her crazy sometimes. Partnering with Lucifer was like constantly babysitting a fire, one that could shed light in an unknown dark, or leap to riled flames that burned everything in its path. Sometimes she didn't know what to do with him.

"We need a distraction," Chloe whispered to him, sitting in the audience. "Wait for something to—"

"Why didn't you say so, then?" Lucifer said, as he yanked the microphone off the speaker as they passed and brushed the front of his shirt to present himself. "Hello, all. Your attention, please. There is a killer in this nice event and it would be good to have all your eyes on me."

Whatever horrible emotion of the week he was having, whatever episode he had with his so-called dad or brother or whoever; somehow, at some point, Lucifer always stepped up to have her back.

In a dingy warehouse in the middle of nowhere, she watched him get shot by a madman without so much as losing his cool. In the midst of an explosion, he reacted by throwing his body atop of hers in a millisecond interval Chloe hadn't been able to think.

Sometimes, walking shoulder to shoulder back to different cars, she spotted holes in his burgundy jacket. "Hey, follow me."

"Oh, fancy some after-work excitement, Detective? I know just what you have in—"

Chloe grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him behind a concrete wall away from the circling officers and blinking blue and red lights. With a quick pull, she parted the jacket, tracing her fingers down his sides.

"Er- Detec—" he piped up, startled, but stilling, allowing her whatever she wanted.

He looked at her, then, going totally quiet, thinking about something deeply. "I must admit," Lucifer said, with a strange, vacant look, "I have no idea what you have in mind. I often don't."

Chloe let go of him, her brow creasing into shadow. "I heard gunshots. I heard gunshots in there and — and why are you wearing clothes with holes in them — how are you still—"

He smiled — one that was unlike the one he usually let glide across his face, like a dream, like falling into one. One that reached his eyes as well as his mouth, eclipsing, if only for a moment, that deeply subdued  _something_  in him.

"I am fine, Detective." He moved himself off the wall, buttoning up the ruined jacket. "Quite fine."

"Then what the hell happened in there? Why were there gunshots?"

Lucifer pursed his lips, his eyes widening comically. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

"Oh, ohh, ok," Chloe started. "It's one of those times. Uhuh, I get it, I get it. So you're the devil, and you're indestructible,  _and lying to me again."_

Lucifer's smile tightened. The thing that made it genuine, that made it beautiful, slipped away as suddenly as it had come.

"I do not lie to you, Detective," he stated. They'd been over this many times. Metaphors this and that, lying this and that, truth here and there and nowhere.

Sometimes, Chloe wondered if she knew anything about him, anything true about him at all. Sometimes, she thought she knew him better than he knew himself.

_That thing he kept under wraps, that thing that came alive in his eyes and his breath, that he never let be directed at Chloe if he could so help it — and god knows he tries. Rage. Lucifer had such a rage in him, Chloe thought, and was so good at masking it, pretending it wasn't there._

_Chloe wasn't afraid of it. It was not a rage that Lucifer whined and yelled about, breaking things and making holes and having other people bear the brunt of it. No, he kept it low and subdued, as if jealously guarding a secret, jealously keeping it away from onlookers. Turing it inwards, instead._

"You're hungover." Chloe stood over him on the couch one day, glaring.

"You're...tall," he blubbered, drunkenly pulling his bathrobe together, turning coyly away. "And it's the weekend. And what are you doing here so early?"

"It's Tuesday. And it's 1:30pm."

"Is it?"

"…Are you ok?" Chloe shifted her weight onto her other leg, crossing her arms. "What's wrong?"

"Okay? As okay as one can ever be!" Lucifer piped up, raising his voice. He hopped off the ruined couch, causing all the limp party streamers and popped balloons and chip crumbs to fall and land in a pile at his bare feet.

"Honestly, why do you humans always assume the worst when….when someone decides they would rather let go and have their hurrahs than join their grumpy detective on another wild goose chase?"

Chloe scoffed. She shook her head with a smirk on her lips before turning sharply away.

She could almost feel Lucifer's face drop behind her.

"Oh, I've said something wrong, I've — Detective—"

_But, you only care enough to rage if you were sad about it first._

_After all, rage is just a cover-up for loss._

"I'm not _'grumpy,'_ " Chloe enunciated, her hair whipping as she turned. "I was actually worried when you didn't turn up to…" She huffed. "My mistake. As ever."

"Not at all," Lucifer replied so immediately that Chloe didn't even have the chance to take another step. "Not your mistake, I mean. Mine." Again, he crossed his silken nightgown over his chest tighter, with the air of someone doing up a particularly complicated necktie. "It was my mistake, and I tell you now I will not make it again."

He smiled at her. He tried to mean it — the smile.

 

* * *

 

At home, Chloe spaded another large spoon of pasta into Dan's plate. "You need to help out. I've made way too much."

Dan stared at her across the table with palpable irritation. "Okay. That explains me. What about him," he said, pointing at Lucifer with a spoon and flickering pasta sauce onto his face.

"I'm here," Lucifer all but purred, following Chloe's example and spooning more pasta into Trixie's bowl, "on business of utmost importance, Daniel."

"Of what? Eating all our food?"

"I invited you to come here and  _please eat our food, Dan,"_  Chloe said.

"Lucifer, you have sauce on your face." Trixie waved a hand in the air, beckoning Lucifer to get his head out of the clouds.

Lucifer bent, eyes widening as Trixie cupped his face and started to wipe the sauce of his cheek. He quickly adapted, looking Dan in the eyes as Trixie worked.

"On our new murder case, I mean! The one with all the gory bits and bobs splattered all over the—"

_"—Lucifer!"_

_"—Ok!"_

Both parents yelled at him.

Chloe shared a look with Dan. Dan sighed and rolled his eyes. She related to Dan deeply, sometimes.

Chloe sighed. "You know that thing we talked about? About not talking about —  _about work_ — in front of Trixie?"

"I can hear you whispering, Mommy."

_"…Yes, Monkey…"_

"Of course, Detective. Shan't let it slip my mind again. And thank you, Spawn," Lucifer smiled at Trixie. "Now Detective Douche, do your duty and eat more of this unpalatable amount of pasta."

"You know what?" Chloe put down her utensils. "Dan, it's fine. I made enough leftovers for a week."

"Oh, you made enough of the stuff to torture your little family for the span of a week, nothing to be proud of," Lucifer started.

"Lucifer, what are you doing? Just siddown and eat more," Dan said, weakly shovelling pasta into his mouth.

"What am I doing? What I'm doing is damage control. I'm calling in reinforcements. Where is Maze when you need her? Doesn't she live here?"

"Yeah, try reaching Maze with a phone," Chloe rolled her eyes. "She's always out at this hour."

After ten minutes of trying to scoff down more pasta, the front door was bashed in as Maze and Amenadiel came rushing in, fists raised.

"Where are they, where is the enemy?!" Amenadiel started, eyes flickering around the house.

Maze stepped past him, smacking Chloe hard on the back before she pulled out the seat next to her and slumped into it. "On the table, soldier."

"Yes," Lucifer announced. "You said you would be here if anything important comes up. Well, this is your chance to shine. The Detective has made too much pasta. We must correct it."

Amenadiel stood before Chloe's dinner table, his hands clenching weakly. "….You called me…to eat….pasta?"

"Thank you, Amenadiel, you're such great help," Chloe said, rushing in in the last moment to scoop Amenadiel food before he changed his mind. "Super great."

"Jesus!" Maze yelled, looking at the large pot in the centre of the table only a quarter of the top un-full. "Who the hell were you cooking for, Godzilla?"

 _"Ha, ha,"_ Chloe quipped.

"No, Maze is right," Lucifer teased. "Though you didn't have to invoke the name of our half-brother now, did you? But, yes, these numbers should fix the problem, shouldn't it, Detective?"

"Well, great," Dan said, stretching his arms to support the back of his neck. "I'm off the hook. Thanks, Lucifer."

One way or another. In some roundabout way. Lucifer always had her back.

 

* * *

 

_"Detective…" Lucifer once said to her. "I am the Devil."_

_Saying one thing and meaning another. Chloe had trouble deciding if he meant it or not._

 

* * *

 

She remembered how it as at the start, those fuzzy memories — or maybe they were dreams, or just images she inserted into her own mind to fill up gaps — that once hung over her head like a storm in the distance edging ever closer, ever realer.

Chloe Decker was a rational person, and for someone like her, there had to be some kind of logic to everything. It made seeing things like — Lucifer on his knees, bending over her with the air of someone committing to memory that people were in fact made of paper flesh and brittle bone and warm blood, gasping with surprise as he was shot —  _annoying,_  to say the least.

It made seeing things like Lucifer haunching over her half-conscious form, moving just so to shield her from a shower of bullets, unleashed one after the other,  _irritating._  Or watching things like Lucifer shaking his head with deranged passion, batting a gun out of a grown man's hand like taking candy from children. Or thrusting straight past overt death threats, one hand gripping the collar of a murderer, heaving them high into air like they were made of cotton. Or him advancing towards a criminal with those arched shoulders and that bare, hungry look, with every intent to do as he said he would.

To punish them.

_A lick of that rage unleashed, in all its burning, righteous glory._

As Chloe raised her handgun, the reflection of Lucifer's eyes flashing red in the metal vat directly opposite, she faltered. As Chloe burst into the interrogation room after Lucifer had done with the perp, the hardened criminal crouched in a corner crying Blood Mary, she gaped. As Chloe walked out of the elevator into the penthouse unannounced, Lucifer with his back towards her, she smelt the faintest whiff of sulphur.

That was the word.  _Righteous._

"Stay in the car if things get ugly," she said, patting once to check her weapon, and getting out of the car. "A shootout right now isn't exactly out of the norm."

"Oh, Darling," Lucifer said, a note off from full out singing, "Never fear. Besides, judging by our bodily affinities, technically the mortal one should be staying in the car."

He got out after her, long legs catching up in an instant.

"Oh, oh right," Chloe started sarcastically. "Right, I forget you're immortal."

Lucifer stopped to look at her, seeming very impressed with her outburst. Like she had finished fitting the final piece of a puzzle. "Why,  _yes,_ Detective,  _exactly."_

It angered her, because it didn't make sense — none of him made any damned sense from his five year logged existence to his legal name to the subdued, eerie feeling she got when he was close.

For her, everything had to have a logic. Even Lucifer.

But Chloe remembered his blood spray into the air like it had burst from a spritz bottle, finely settling onto the floor in a mist. Chloe remembered being walked out of a flaming building, and Lucifer peeling back his sleeves to look at the raw, seared burns with experimental fascination. She remembered him rocking forward, totally lost to himself, as he tackled a murderer to the floor before they could fully turn on her, the upright hilt of a dagger lodged neatly above his vest pocket.

"I can't believe…" Chloe said, half a gasp, half an admission of horror, when she point blanc shot him.

But he kept point blanc telling her that he was the Devil.

"Good for you! See!" he started sunnily. "Hardly hurts.  _Gah,_  actually, no, it's hurting a little bit. It's —  _gah!_ — it's hurting a lot. _Son of a bitch, that really hurts."_

She remembered him putting his hand to the shot, lifting it with a sort of — a sort of removed kind of awe. Like there was a disconnect between him looking at the shot and feeling it.

"…I'm bleeding?"

Then he looked to her, as if wanting her to be the one to confirm it.

_"What's happening to me?"_

 

* * *

 

In Chloe's dreams, Lucifer's careless, reckless feats go on.

Lucifer covers Chloe with his suit jacket, heaving her out of the burning house.

Lucifer flinches, haunching over her to stop the hail of bullets.

And so on.

The cold, hard fact that Lucifer has started to disregard his own life for Chloe's, frightens her.

In her dreams, his body is on fire. His clothes, damp with blood. His eyes are vacant, unseeing, as they look above at the sky—

—Like those figures in those stained glass windows. An almost saintlike image.

He gets shot, and dies.

But dreams aren't logical.

 

* * *

 

The sound of waves crashed in the distance, the autumn warmth of the LA shore beset with a sudden windy chill. Chloe finished up with taking her perpetrator into a police vehicle, and quickly gave a run-down of the case to the other officers before they simply stopped discussing work to chat. Caught in a circle, Chloe realised that Lucifer, who had helped her catch the killer, had already left.

"Excuse me," she said. "I got to — I got to finish my report and head back. See you back at the precinct."

"You don't want to head up with us, Decker?"

"Yeah, we can get a coffee on the way back or something."

"Uh, no," Chloe waved them off, "I'll catch you next time."

Away from the crowds of people, away from the group of cops and investigators, Lucifer was standing on the shore. As Chloe neared, she could see that his jacket was only half on, draped across one shoulder. He was looking at something intently, standing dangerously close to the threshold of the incoming water. Only a few minutes more, and his ankles would be submerged.

Chloe felt a sudden urge to call out to him, ask him what he was doing. But there was something about it — him standing quietly, doing nothing but thinking— that startled Chloe. Being alone was not the same as being lonesome, she reminded herself. That Lucifer was alone on the beach, however, gave Chloe the particular feeling of being  _lonely._

"Hey," Chloe said, "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Lucifer turned to look at her, his eyes widening. "Well. Here I am."

"Well — we should wrap up the police report." Chloe started, upbeat. She felt surprised by the tone of her own voice. "And by that, I mean paperwork, not some celebratory drink that you'll then turn into a  _moment,_ " she finished jokingly.

Lucifer chuckled, his staunch demeanour breaking down completely. Chloe snickered too.

"Well. I've changed my mind about  _moments_ ," Lucifer said, tearing his jacket off to put it on correctly. "I realised it would never work out between us."

Chloe felt as if a switch had turned, flipping everything around her in an instant into something unfamiliar. She felt as if she had gotten whiplash. "Oh?"

"Yes," Lucifer continued, not noticing the change. He lifted a hand, gesturing to her, his eyes shifting from point to point before it finally reached her. When it did, his gaze never strayed away. "So from now on, no more attempts at moments. I'd be honoured to simply continue working by your side. —If you'll have me."

Chloe understood that this was important, somehow. Like seeing a hazy face in a reflection, hearing truths that could never be, feeling symmetrical scars on a back that would never fade. What he said was a throwaway line on a faraway beach. What he meant, was that he wanted permission to stay.

_Wanted, not needed._

"Of course. Yeah," Chloe answered.

"Good," Lucifer said, turning the relief in his eyes towards the sand.

There was a silence. Chloe felt as if she didn't speak now, the universe would forever hold its peace — and her regret — at staying silent. "It's not like you to give up," Chloe said.

"No, I haven't given up," Lucifer answered quickly. "I had an…epiphany, of sorts. You deserve someone worthy of you and that isn't me."

Chloe shook her head. "That's not what I've been saying, Lucifer."

"I know," Lucifer implored, "It's what I'm saying. You deserve someone better. Because you, Detective, are selfless to a nauseating degree."

Chloe stared at Lucifer like he had grown another head. She kept staring until lucifer sighed and clenched his jaw, working to defend his admission. "You always put your daughter first, even though the ungrateful urchin does nothing to contribute to the rent."

Chloe laughed, holding a hand to her lips, happy to be in on the joke. But Lucifer continued.

"You always put what is right first, unable to even begin to consider the easier paths a lesser person would choose. So…you deserve someone worthy of that grace," Lucifer said, his emotions laid bare on his face, changing to emphasise every sincere word.

"Someone who knows every crime scene breaks your heart, even though you'd never admit it. Someone who actually appreciates your impossibly boring middle name:  _Jane_. And more importantly, Detective, you deserve someone as good as you. Because. Well, you're special. And I'm—"

He inhaled deeply. "I'm not worth it. Not truly."

She thought about what Lucifer said and what Lucifer did, and the discrepancies between it — two completely different languages saying completely different things. Wanting and not wanting at the same time. She thought about why he felt he needed to ask her permission, why he wanted to remain by her side.

Why she let him.

Chloe smiled. This was logical.

"Yeah. You're probably right."

She took a step closer, leaned in, and kissed him.

 

* * *

 

Chloe shut the door lightly behind her, about to call out before the sound of the piano reverberated again. Lux wasn't open today, but Lucifer was singing.

_"It's not far, yes close by. Through an open door…"_

Chloe stood in the short corridor before the balcony, struck by how...how different it was. High and slow, too slow for what she knew was Lucifer's liking. It had the quality of a church song, or an aria. She'd heard this before, what was it?

_"Mother's there 'specting me. Father's waiting, too…_

_"Lots of folk gathered there. All the friends I knew."_

He was singing Going Home, by Sissel.

_"All the friends I knew…_

_"I'm going home."_

"Do you miss it?"

Chloe quietly neared the balcony, looking down at the dark stage floor in the middle of the club. She should have spoken out, she had a lead on a case she was waiting for Lucifer to consult on, but the softness of the song had taken her so off guard that she lingered now. Unwilling to break the dreamlike scene.

Maze was standing on the other side of the grand piano, leaning onto the black lid with a sleepy quality. "Do you?"

Lucifer stopped singing. But he continued on playing the song, his fingers dancing effortlessly across the keys through a particularly complicated segment. Then his eyes flickered up when he finally afforded it, eyeing Maze suspiciously.

"Are you questioning me, Mazikeen?"

Chloe breathed.  _Questioning him_. Coming from Lucifer, it should mean nothing. Sure, he was Maze's boss, but she knew Lucifer never played the authority figure between them. It should not have been a reprimand. And yet, it was not a harmless quip either.

Maze made a face. She sighed deferentially, smiling with an edge. "Thank you for noticing that I've been questioning your decisions since the dawn of our landing on the beach."

"Ah," Lucifer piped up. He went back to his music, eyes pulling away from Maze, who huffed in an uncharacteristically petulant way before heaving herself up onto the top of the piano. She slunk across it, a Vogue magazine spread.

"You didn't answer the question," Maze said, a little too loud. But the club was closed and empty, and they had been together since before Chloe ever knew either of them, and they thought they were alone. Maze was tipsy, a rare moment totally unguarded, and Lucifer was singing an aria for her, singing about something other than sex and debauchery.

"Do I miss what?" Lucifer asked innocently, "My beautiful, custom-made, liquorice black convertible that you've hidden the keys away from me, my morning beauty sleep-ins, or, perchance, my quaint little 80's moustache you so viciously attacked off my face?"

Chloe flitted her hand to her mouth, just able to smother a snort of a laugh from echoing around the emptiness of the room.

Maze did laugh, pushing a glass of heavy scotch to her mouth to quash it. She tipped it back jerkily. "You should still be thanking me for that…that face mishap. It looked like a poisonous caterpillar had set camp on top of your lips. It looked like Picasso played 'pin the moustache' on one of his pictures and somehow got it right. It looked like—"

"It happened almost five hundred years ago, before the 80s ever happened, in fact," Lucifer started over her, stopping the song to smash keys. The notes strained in a conglomeration of noise. "Since it never saw the light of fire, nobody got to voice their opinion on it. You don't get points for that."

Chloe's lips turned up despite herself. Five hundred years ago? Of course, Maze of all people would go along with Lucifer's pantomime. She did for everything else he did anyway, why stop where his sanity did? Ha.

Maze dragged herself off the piano, her heels clicking against the floor as she went to Lucifer with a booze and a cup. Lucifer had already recovered from the interruption, starting up the music once more. He wasn't singing anymore, but Chloe remembered the lyrics of the song.

_Going home, going home, I'm jus' going home…_

_Quiet like, some still day…_

Maze poured scotch into the glass she had drank from, and lifted it to Lucifer's lips. Without stopping, Lucifer took the offering in silence and sipped as he played.

"Do you miss home?" Maze asked starkly.

Chloe's breath hitched. She felt enclosed, suddenly, without a way out. If she retracted her steps, her footsteps and the elevator would undoubtedly give her away, now that both of the club tenders below were alert. That would admit she was a voyeur, looking on at someone else's private moment from hiding. If she went out and broke their conversation, she would miss her chance and never know who Lucifer truly was. Where the beautiful man with the beautiful voice came from.

"Why?" Lucifer echoed, sounding lost.

"Because I asked," Maze snapped. She poured a second glass. When she was done, she hovered it between them. "Is that not enough?"

Lucifer's expression did not change. "What's there to miss? My seven closest brothers who look at me like I am dirt beneath their feet, my sisters who scorn my name like it is a profanity, my triumphs and sacrifices, my very existence erased for the sake of saving face."

Chloe stood frozen at that sudden and heated admission, not understanding a word he was saying, but understanding every emotion and anger brimming behind them.

_(Low and subdued, as if jealously guarding a secret. Turning it inwards, instead. A cover up for loss.)_

"I do not miss…" Lucifer said, "…that of being a servant to a Lord who abandoned me, because I bade respect should go both ways."

Maze smiled. "...Haha... _hahahahahaha-"_

She nodded at Lucifer's answer, smiling and nodding, until her entire body was rocking along in laughter, high and mocking. Finally deciding who got the drink in her hands, she tipped it back for herself in a single gulp.

"What's so funny?" Lucifer asked, the music still going on, becoming the entirely mismatched background of an invisible but ineffable scuffle. "What's so hilarious, Maze?"

_Mother's there 'specting me. Father's waiting, too…_

Maze stopped. "I should have known. I just found it funny, was all — I asked you if you missed home thinking we had the same answer.  _We did!"_ she enunciated, eyes flickering to the ceiling for a second, "And yet — it turns out the concept of 'home' for us exist on  _entirely different planes!"_

_Lots of folk gathered there. All the friends I knew._

_All the friends I—_

Lucifer grunted, a terrible, almost animalistic growl unfurling deep in his throat. Before Chloe knew it, he curled his hands into fists and slammed it uncaringly onto the keys once more. A brash move done in completely different circumstances from before. Maze did not flinch. Her shoulders slowly stretched back, becoming squared and proud, ending her sleepy slouch back into her formal presentation. Her jaw was set on an angle. She glared at Lucifer, saying nothing. Just waiting.

Lucifer lifted his hands off the keys, running his eyes up and down it as if he'd just realised what he'd done. With a short huff, he closed his eyes with relief and began rolling his sleeves down, fixing his cuffs.

"It's terribly ironic," he said calmly. "The song, I mean."

Chloe inched forward, wanting to see the expression he had on his face. But Lucifer had pushed his seat back from the piano, slouching, and with that tiny movement the irksome edge of the Lux neon sign obscured his expression.

"My Mother can never expect to see me again. My Father will never, not in this existence, not in the next, await for me. I have no friends gathered above. I have no one."

Lucifer finished fixing his cuffs and turned his body to face Maze for the first time. Maze lingered, holding the empty glass. Chloe couldn't see Lucifer, and yet, and yet — she felt the distinct feeling of  _wanting to look away_  overwhelm her. She turned her head, just focussing on his voice instead.

"But I have you. In the home I built to house us, in the home I forced into being, borne of my will. In the home that forged you." Lucifer paused. "You know I much prefer my Hell to Heaven."

Silence reigned again. Chloe's mind was whirring, trying to make sense of this, trying so hard to understand.

Where was the logic in this?

After a moment, she heard Maze sigh. "I'm drunk."

Heels clacked on the floor again before Chloe heard the sound of the scotch been pushed from one side of the piano to the other. There was a quiet moment where someone was pouring more. Chloe briefly wondered if Lucifer had just pushed it towards her, or if he was also pouring her the drink. Reversing roles. Being a gentleman, after a very ungentlemanly display.

"I'm so wasted."

"Yes, Darling."

"I'm not your darling. I'm your demon."

"And I am your friend. Not just your Prince."

Chloe swallowed.  _Not just?_  The possibility of Lucifer being some kind of British royalty took her so off guard it felt like her head had began to spin in multiple directions at once.

Maze made a displeased sound, scoffing. "…You even still think like them. In your head, you think you're the Prince of the Fallen. In mine," Maze said, "you're the King of the Damned."

Lucifer laughed, his voice jingling. "Is there a difference?"

"Only a colossal one."

For a moment, there was only the sound of glass clinking. Someone had taken the glass, the other— the entire bottle.

"I don't miss our home. I don't miss it at all, Mazikeen."

Maze hesitated. "Neither do I, Lucifer."

"Then let's never go back," Lucifer said quickly.

The spell Chloe was under was broken by the sound of a phone vibrating. She peered beyond the rails again, seeing Lucifer pick up his phone and look at the screen.

"Oh, Miss Lopez — telling me Dan told her to tell me to tell the Detective of this rather….juicy news on a case. Maze, I'm needed elsewhere."

"Hn."

At this point, Chloe slowly shuffled back to the elevator corridor before loudly and unceremoniously clacking her shoes across the floor, pretending to look at her phone as she approached the steps down to the club. She had so many things on her mind that she would need to dissect later — not least the way in which Lucifer called 'Detective Douche'  _Dan_  when alone, Ella still being a  _Miss,_ and how he deferred to her title when speaking of Chloe.

"Ahhh," Lucifer sang, and Chloe was startled at the sudden exuberance of him, the melancholic conversation he'd just had melting away in the instant upon seeing her. "Detective! The woman of the hour, just whom Miss Lopez told me that Detective Douche told her to tell yours truly to tell the Detective that we just caught our prime suspect. The case is afoot!"

Chloe dumped her coat on one of the couches, too heavy after the chill of the morning had passed. "Hey Maze, thanks for babysitting him."

"Hah!" Maze tipped her head back. "If you were fun like this from the start, Decker, I would never have wanted to kill you in the first place."

Chloe elected to ignore that comment.

"Detective?!" Lucifer growled as he clutched his chest, feigning at taking offence. "You wound me!"

Chloe marched forward, taking the scotch bottle right out of Lucifer's hands, who let go the second she clutched it. Chloe leaned back and chugged what was left in the bottle, coming back up with a satiated sigh. Both Lucifer and Maze stared at her, then at each other, then at her again.

"I leave your presence for twenty four hours and you become an alcoholic, Detective? My — this case is much more dire than previously thought."

"Yeah? Well then, come on — let's go see what Dan and Ella have got already. Sorry Maze, I gotta borrow Lucifer for the night."

"Night expedition as well? Why, Detective, is it my birthday?"

Chloe scoffed, Maze rolled her eyes.

"Are you going to come or not?" Chloe asked, already turning for the door.

Lucifer smiled. "With pleasure."

 

* * *

 

In her dreams, Lucifer stands on his penthouse balcony. A place so high above the ground it felt like the starlight was closer here than anywhere else. A glass box floating in the sky.

Lucifer leans easily on the glass railing, overlooking the bustling, moving city that never sleeps.

Sometimes, Chloe wonders if he really ever sleeps either.

"Ah, Detective," he says, turning around, and Chloe never fails to notice the way surprise flickers in the light of his eyes, like he's always surprised Chloe would be here of all places, to see him — the way the taut line of his lips stretches into a beam.

When Lucifer is alone, Chloe has found, he is never smiling.

(Here, the dream is true to real life.)

"What do you mean," Chloe asks, "when you say you're the devil?"

Lucifer pulls back, touching the glass of the balcony rails behind him. Backed into a corner. He smiles, but it's not the same — it's weighed down with truths he cannot share, even if he wants to.

"I do not lie to you, Detective."

Of course. In dreams, Lucifer only says things he has already said to her before. 

Chloe huffs, shaking her head. "If you don't lie, then tell me this." Chloe looks him in his crimson eyes. "Where is  _'home'_ to you, Lucifer?"

"I…" He tries to answer her. He desperately tries to answer her, but he's silenced — as if he's physically unable to make the words.

Lucifer takes another step back, but there is no more space in this box in the sky. The glass panel behind him disappears suddenly. Or maybe it was never there at all.

"I don't know."

In her dreams, he falls.

 

* * *

 

At one hour past midnight, the dark, electric, and yet dream-like atmosphere of Lux was live and  _alive_. A dark fantasy come out of the reaches of people's inhibitions, allowing the masquerade masks of the day to be shed for something truer. People were dressed in their best, in skintight dresses, in seven inch heels, in waxed up hair, name brand jackets and the like. People were on the dance floor, rocking in tune with the music, holding one another, loving, living.

Lux was a firecracker, a hot pit of change and movement. Lux was a red-toned safe haven, a place for letting go. It took a long time for Chloe to ever see Lux for what it meant to its loyalists. To see why people could be loyal to it — to a  _feeling._

"Ms Decker!" the bartender whom Lucifer had hired to replace Maze (Johnny, his name was Johnny and he was a nice man, don't be mean), handed her her usual. She hadn't stopped to drink here so often that she had a usual.

"Hey."

But Lucifer knew her tastes, and so Johnny knew her tastes, and, "Drink's on the house, as always." Johnny winked at her and quickly busied himself with other orders before Chloe could refuse.

Lucifer was in the crowd. He had one hand around a woman's waist, one hand spilling something red like a Bloody Mary onto the floor, his eyes on her as they swayed to the music. When she spotted him again, he had another drink and another woman on his arms. This time they hovered at the side, the woman giggled at something Lucifer had said, and thanked him before politely leaving. Soon after, Lucifer sat with a man, pouring him a drink as he nosed Lucifer's hair. He was surrounded by people, milling around them as they milled around him.

From an outsider's view it would've make him look two-faced.

A man singing an aria to his companion in an empty club. And then this man jumping and shagging and romping around. A mayfly that only lived for a day, a moth that could only fly towards light, a hedonist.

Chloe nodded her head to the music, taking a sip. She didn't know why she was here, she didn't come here with a case. Lucifer was always busy on Saturday nights, with a club to run and music to sing and people to dance with.

But it fascinated Chloe to watch him from afar. Seeing him glean two dozen or more intimate little moments, and then walk away from it forever.

 _Being alone is not the same as being lonesome,_ Chloe reminded herself. That night, the club was the fullest it had ever been.

This was Lucifer's life, she realised.

_Driving nice sport cars down near-empty highways for fun, having a different lady on his arm, knowing it would only be for a night, throwing parties as wonderful and decadent as this, and dressing up in royal maroon and emerald green and ocean blue, and laughing, and telling himself this was living._

For everyone else, they had somewhere else to go, somewhere else to be, to return to, when they had their dance and let their steam run its course. For Lucifer, this was it.

(Everyday, for everyday until he met Chloe.)

Chloe remembered a memory of Lucifer sitting in his nightclub drinking, and Chloe came up to him to pull him away from his drunken misery and he said, with ghosts in his eyes,  _"Lux is my home."_

_(He told Maze one truth. He told Chloe another.)_

"Detective?" Lucifer whispered, his hair in a mess, flicked up and ruffled by his last guest. His lips trembled into a large, bright smile. "Oh my, look at my poor manners. How long have you been here without a — an  _escort,_ Detective? Without a _partner?_  Why I  _deplore it!"_

Chloe laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind an ear. "No, no, Lucifer. I'm just here to enjoy the atmosphere. For once. No case."

"Oh?"

Lucifer abandoned his glass, _"Thanks Johnny!"_  and wiped his hand with his kerchief before offering it to Chloe. "Fancy a change of atmosphere, then?"

 

* * *

 

Upstairs, the glass windows and balcony of the penthouse glistened in the ever glowing LA lights. When they arrived, it was completely dark. Lucifer switched on the lights, then adjusted them to what he described as, _"the romance setting, my Detective."_

Lucifer let himself collapse onto the couch, beckoning her to join him. "How are you? What's the gossip, do spill."

"Huh?" Chloe fell onto the couch as well, cracking her neck from one side. "What do you mean? I'm not on a case, I told you."

"I wasn't talking about a case. I asked, how are you?"

Chloe covered a yawn. "I'm fine. Why are you asking all of a sudden?"

Lucifer shrugged his shoulders. "Thought you had something on your mind. You don't usually drop by on your own volition. Is it Dan?  _It is Pierce?!"_  he said with a heated lilt.

Chloe disguised her sudden outburst as a sigh. "No — nothing to do with that! I just. I dunno." The high rise lights outside were stronger than the mood-adjusted ones inside, streaking across the floor and the furniture like a monochrome noir film.

"I guess it's just cos of that — that I _don't usually drop by on my own volition,"_  she said, mimicking Lucifer in a butchered accent. He looked at her with that surprise in his eyes. Surprise that she had indeed come to spend time in his company. Chloe huffed. "I had a funny dream. That's all."

Lucifer grinned. A beam of light streaked across his face in the right moment. Chloe noticed the few smile lines crinkled around his eyes. Used to smiling.

"I wasn't insinuating anything, mind you," Lucifer said, still grinning, "If Johnny hasn't made it clear, you're welcome whenever you please."

Chloe scoffed and Lucifer chuckled at her reaction.

"You know, I had a funny dream about you here once. You were…" Lucifer, like he'd suddenly remembered something he'd once forgotten, began to move. "You were standing right there, and I was standing right here. And, well."

Chloe got up too. Lucifer stood before the balcony, looking at where Chloe would have stood.

Lucifer huffed, then shook his head, and turned to her. "Well, yes, it was a silly dream."

Without thinking, Chloe asked, "In it, did you fall?"

It was a silly dream. Chloe stood in the penthouse, and Lucifer stood in the penthouse, both of them standing in a glass box floating in the starry sky. An empty, magazine snapshot of a home. Chloe was struck by the sudden nauseous feeling of déjà vu, walking into a moment she had already had before.

Lucifer's smile crystallised on his face, hardened and shattered.

"No." Lucifer shook his head slightly. "I jumped."

 _"—What?!"_ Chloe's eye's widened.

"Oh. Oh no — no, no, no — _not like that._ In my dream, you — you saw something horrible and fell. I jumped after you."

There was not one line in that admission that did not give Chloe an overwhelming sense of utter horror.

_The cold, hard fact that Lucifer has started to disregard his own life for Chloe's, frightens her._

After a long, quiet moment, Chloe nodded. "What did I see?"

Lucifer's eyes were downcast. "Nothing of importance, I assure you. Nothing to worry about."

Lucifer’s lips stretched, a soft smile, but it was hard to fall into that dream again. He didn’t mean it, and Chloe could tell.

"What did I see, Lucifer?" Chloe asked again, in a tone of voice that was not conversation, and Lucifer knew would not take no for an answer. Chloe also knew that he wouldn't lie to her.

Lucifer hummed a moment. "…You saw…a man for what he is."

But he doesn't tell her the whole truth either.

The glass box did not break. No one fell.

 

* * *

 

 **In the Present,** Chloe ends the call with Dan and runs back down the building from the landing pad littered with feathers.

Chloe runs down the steps, her heart in her mouth, and her fear uncurling in her chest, and her logic down in a pit in her stomach, and the truth — the truth sitting in her mind clear as day, clear as the sun silhouetted behind Lucifer's dark frame just a slim moment ago.

The room is a cluttered mess of things and feathers and fallen debris from the burst-through roof.

Lucifer crouches near Marcus Pierce, who is lain on the ground. Neither are moving.

"Lucifer!" Chloe goes to him, her breath escaping. "Lucifer."

Slowly, surely, he rises up to full height. Pierce doesn't move.

Lucifer looks different. (This is an understatement.)

The figure who sounds like Lucifer, who felt like him, who looked nothing like himself, smiled.

"Detective?"

He has told her: he is the devil.

But now she believes him.

 

* * *

 

Here is the catch: Lucifer says one thing and does another. He always does. He always does. It is to be expected. He could have, at any time, anywhere,  _shown_  her the truth, instead of repeating the same lines again and again like a broken record people train themselves not to listen to. If he had no face, he can show her wings. If he had no wings, he can show her the face.

He can tell her: I am the devil I am the devil—

But he also knows that he will not be believed.

When Lucifer got up, turning around to greet the Detective with a smile, he did not know the face he was showing her was the incorrect one.

She believes him now, but did he ever want her to?

 

* * *

 

"Detective?" Lucifer asks again. His smile has already faltered. His lips turn down, his eyes — those crimson-deep, endless pits of eyes, darken even further as he lifts a hand to his face. His own fingers burns on contact, smoke and embers breaking from the charred surface. He seizes in a breath of air with the demeanour of a man who's lung is collapsing.

Everything has already collapsed for him.

Lucifer turns, one hand raised as if to shield his true colours, swaying around to put his back towards Chloe.

"I— I didn't know I…"

"…You're…" Chloe utters, her throat dry, nothing and everything making sense all at once. She clears her throat, and tries again. "You were telling the truth. You always were and I just—"

"No, no." Lucifer stays where he is. He doesn't look at her. "I'm sorry, Detect… _Chloe."_

It takes something for him to dare say her name. To insinuate he had the right to.

"What do you mean — Pierce was the one who was running a criminal empire, you defended me, Lucifer—"

Lucifer's back is tall and black and gaunt. Like a shadow of a thing in an already dark room.

"…Who've I been fooling, Chloe?  _I do not tell lies?"_ he lampoons, near sing-song. "What a joke. What a facade, _what a bold-faced lie!"_

Lucifer shakes his head. It is red, fire-scorched and scarred, and it makes Chloe think he's in pain.

"I've been deceptive to you, haven't I?" Lucifer says. His voice is velvety light, beautiful as always.

Chloe shook her head. "No. Just…I know you, okay? I know who you are. You're Lucifer, you wear good clothes and you drive fast cars and you own a club and fill it with people everyday to put something in the void you have. You're Lucifer and you're so alone and so used to it, so lived in it, that it surprises you so much someone could want to see you for nothing in return — no jobs, no favours, nothing."

Chloe swallows, biting back the heat behind her eyes. "You're Lucifer Morningstar, and you've taken a dagger to the chest for me. And you've taken too many a bullet for me.  _I know who you are."_

Lucifer's shoulders arch up to his ears, his fingers popping and straining in spasms at his side, like he wants to claw something apart, hold onto something until it shatters. "…You know what fate has afforded you to know. You don't know the half of it. I've told you. The other side of me is — bad. It's monstrous."

He's saying things he's already said. Like a dream. But this is real.

"No." Chloe's voice breaks. "I told you — _not to me._  Stop this. You don't need to hide. Turn around."

Lucifer huffs, a low chuckle. "I know you too," he starts. "You are Chloe Decker, and you are smart, and just, and kind. You are the reason why the war I've fought and lost was not for nothing after all. You are," Lucifer huffs again, " _wonderful…_ but I am keen. I've deceived you into thinking I'm a decent man. I've deceived you into thinking you  _want_ me to turn around, that you  _want_  to see me for what I am. And that is the greatest sin of all I've committed since coming here…"

He sighs. His shoulders arch and drop, and his head bows. His back remains towards Chloe. "…I'm sorry…Detective. I truly am."

 _"For what?!"_ Chloe screams.

But Chloe never finds out, because there is a sudden flare of light from him — an incredible solar flare that whitens her eyes and puts images of white spots in her mind and blinds her. And there is the smell of burning, a large gust of wind in her face, a snap of bones and muscles and—

"Lucifer?"

Chloe is standing in the middle of an empty room, with only bodies of unconscious and dead men for company. The torn-open roof causes an eerie whistle where the wind hits it just right. The clouds above are parted, like a jet has zipped through the middle. There are sounds of sirens in the distance, making up white noise. 

"Lucifer?!  _Lucifer! Lucifer—"_

Chloe, half blinded, screams over and over again.  _"Lucifer!"_

No one answers.

 

* * *

 

That night, Chloe dreams.

She is in the glass penthouse hung high in the starry LA night. A glass box floating. An airy real estate showroom. A luxury modern magazine spread.

The balcony door is open, silken curtains blowing into the room like white banners or _—_ _or wings._

Chloe walks outside.

There is no one here. This is no one's home.

It's like there never was anyone here in the first place.

Like she might have never met a man under the dim lights of a now derelict nightclub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know Lucifer is first and foremost a comedy before its a drama but everything I touch turns to angst so here you go. I have to go overboard and take everything goddamn seriously - and I also wish the show could take itself a little more seriously so I can get some of that sweet, sweet Dramatique Shite.
> 
> Gosh Lucifer is such a dumb show. I love it. 
> 
> I bet season 4 starts off with Lou fleeing the scene as hard as can be.


End file.
